I'm glad to see a fair degree of consistency of position among those who opposed the Iraq war, but then cheering for Obama's attempt at regime change after ranting against Bush's would have been too obviously hypocritical.
I would appreciate a greater degree of consistency of position among those who supported the Iraq war. Cheering for Bush's regime change and ranting against Obama's is too obviously hypocritical.
Having said this, there certainly remains reasons to criticize the Obama Administration for its efforts as there were to criticize the Bush Administration for its.
I watched Obama's address to the nation on Libya and thought:
The speech was written and delivered to defend and promote Obama. One can argue that whenever a president argues for or attempts to explain the position of America in some world event, he is arguing for or attempting to explain
his position, but I can't recall another presidential speech where what may have been the subtext was so blatantly the text. The man's constant use of "I" rather than "We," or "America" underscores his narcissism. Again, all presidents to one extent or the other may mean "I" when they say "We," but they have, at least, the good sense to use the appropriate pronouns in a speech intended to unify the American people around a particular position.
And his insistence on directly addressing his critics and referencing what he believes to be the failures of his predecessor in such speeches demonstrates a lack of maturity and anchors them in partisan politics.
The speech was also filled with seeming contradictions and did nothing to clearly explain what is a personal political problem for this president, but a broader, fundamental problem for American Foreign Policy:
Why Libya?
Why not any and every other place in the world where tyrants are killing and oppressing their people?
In fact he attempted to address the question, but I heard no answer beyond:
"We can only do it when US interests are at stake, and I say they are at stake with Libya."
Yes, he made a feeble attempt at arguing that if Kaddafi is permitted to crush the Libyan rebellion it would somehow influence the current wave of democracy spreading throughout the Middle East. Maybe it would, and maybe it wouldn't, but why is a democratic Middle East in our interests, but not a democratic sub-Saharan Africa?
Is the premise that the US should not support the struggle for democracy in a single nation unless and until that nation becomes one in a chain of similarly striving nations? Is that a practical requirement for intervention, that we should only get involved when the rewards are much larger?
Meanwhile a very large and obvious elephant stood by him at the podium and was ignored: Oil.
There are only two reasons America give a fig for what happens in this region of the world: Oil and Israel, and if it wasn't for oil, Israel would not be in jeopardy.
Why spend billions of dollars and risk American lives to preserve the flow of oil to our European allies?
One can argue that by preserving the supply of oil to Europe, worldwide demand and therefore prices for the US are being controlled, but then why spend billions of dollars and risk American lives to maintain control over the price of oil?
Furthermore, why spend billions of dollars funding oil exploration in Brazil by a private company with connections to George Soros?
And why do either when we can spend billions and not risk lives on developing our own oil resources here in America or just offshore?
The Gulf Oil Spill was a disaster, but hardly of the proportions doomsayer environmentalists were predicting, and it was never necessary to send our service men and women to the Gulf to kill or be killed in an effort to address the disaster.
Obama and the democrats are Keynesians. They believe that the government should use taxpayer dollars to stimulate the economy. Why do they believe that it is better for our economy if those tax dollars are spent in South America and the Middle East rather than in the US?
Having told us military action in Libya was in our interests, but failing to explain what those interests were and how bombing Libyans supported them, Obama kept returning to the humanitarian reasons for intervention; how Khadafy was prepared to raze Benghazi and slaughter its people:
Quote:It was not in our national interest to let that happen. I refused to let that happen.
Which, of course, leads us back to the question of why aren't we intervening in any number of other nations around the world where there is wide scale human rights violations?
Not in our interests!
When a president gives a speech that is so vague, contradictory and partisan as this one, it leaves his critics plenty of opportunities to assume the worst, and rightly so.
